​Ripple Hosts

​Matthew Blain

​Voyager Ventures

​Namratha Kothapalli

​Speedinvest

​TL;DR

​Connecting billions of devices will underpin the climate transition. Plaid has achieved a $6B valuation providing connectivity to the FinTech ecosystem. What will it take for a company to replicate this success in climate?

​Topic overview

• ​Billions of electric heat pumps, smart meters, EVs and water heaters will underpin the climate transition

• ​Controlling these assets at scale is critical to effectively managing energy consumption across the grid

• ​But app developers can’t connect to every model from every hardware OEM globally, it would take too long

• ​API layers offer app developers connections to billions of devices through a single API

• ​We have seen considerable excitement around companies building API layers in the climate space (e.g. Enode, Texture, Openvolt, Electricity Maps, ENAPI, Derapi, SmartCar, Volteras etc.)

• ​What will it take for a company to replicate Plaid’s success in climate?

• ​Where does defensibility come from in an API layer business?

• ​What are the common pitfalls that companies can fall into?

• ​Is there a path to $100M in revenue? $200M in revenue? Which use cases?

• ​Why was Plaid able to win in the FinTech space?

• ​What are the characteristics investors should look in this space for that evidence a $1B+ opportunity?

• ​Where is the market going and what do we expect to see play out over the next 5-10 years?

​Dream outcome

​Investors and founders share their learnings from the space and are more clear eyed on the relative scale of the opportunity for different API layer business models.

​Who should attend?

• ​Founders building in the space

• ​Investors investing in the space